Golden State @ Brooklyn preview

Last Meeting ( Feb 25, 2017 ) Brooklyn 95, Golden State 112

The Golden State Warriors continue to be a dominant third-quarter team but hope they don't have to wait that long to get things going when they visit the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday. After giving up 47 points in the first quarter at Philadelphia on Friday, the Warriors returned the favor with 47 of their own in the third to erase a 24-point deficit en route to a 124-116 victory.

Stephen Curry scored 20 of his 35 points in the third against the 76ers, who finished with only 15 in the quarter. Curry's best offensive showing since Oct. 21 at Memphis (37 points) allowed Golden State to recover from an 88-point effort in a loss at Boston two nights earlier. The Nets have split the first two contests of their three-game homestand after topping Utah 118-107 on Friday. Moments after the team announced star guard D'Angelo Russell would be sidelined indefinitely due to knee surgery, Spencer Dinwiddie stepped into the spotlight with a career-high 25 points as Brooklyn improved to 4-3 at home.

TV: 6 p.m. ET, NBCSN Bay Area (Golden State), YES (Brooklyn)

ABOUT THE WARRIORS (12-4): Kevin Durant scored 27 points against Philadelphia and David West came off the bench to produce 14 on 7-of-8 shooting in just 13 minutes of action. Coach Steve Kerr used back-to-back timeouts in the first quarter as the 76ers piled it on, but he thinks pride may have been the catalyst after the break. "We weren't locked in, we weren't focused and I wanted to jolt them a little bit, let them have it," Kerr told reporters regarding the timeouts. "(But) it took the embarrassment of getting blown off the floor in the first half to get us going."

ABOUT THE NETS (6-9): Russell joins fellow guard Jeremy Lin on the sidelines for most or all of the season, leaving Dinwiddie as one of the few key backcourt players to survive the injury bug. "I think as a starter, and as a point guard in my position, you try to lead," Dinwiddie told reporters on Friday. "I didn't do anything different because of the surgery. I'd like to think that we won for (Russell) though, because our hearts go out to him as our teammate and our brother." Shooting guard Allen Crabbe is averaging 16.5 points while making 8-of-16 3-pointers over his last two games, which comes on the heels of a three-game stretch during which he averaged 6.3 and was 3-for-17 from beyond the arc.

BUZZER BEATERS

1. West is 20-for-26 from the floor over his last six games.

2. Brooklyn scored 39 points in the first quarter - a team high for any period this season - against the Jazz on Friday.

3. Golden State won both meetings last season by an average of 16.5 points.

PREDICTION: Warriors 114, Nets 104